Ali's Rocky Ride

by Molly Hurford

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Molly Hurford

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2020 by Violet Lemay

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Rodale Kids, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Rodale and the colophon are registered trademarks and Rodale Kids is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9781635652802 (hc) — ISBN 9781984894267 (lib. bdg.) — ebook ISBN 9781635652819

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my parents, who let me be a bookworm and who now spend their weekends clanging cowbells for me at races

  TRAINING LOG

  TODAY’S WORKOUT: Rest, recovery, and getting ready for the invasion! Days like this off the bike help you prepare to go hard the next day. Trust me, it’s going to be a hectic two weeks as we train for this downhill competition. See you soon! XO, Phoebe

  YOUR NOTES: Umm, hi, training log. My name is Ali. I like to ride bikes. I always have.

  So, that’s the short introduction.

  Okay, fine. I’ll go longer, but only because I told my coach—that’s Phoebe—that I would keep better track of what I was doing every day on the bike. That’s why she has me using this cool training log on my iPad to make notes on my riding, and to tell me what I should be doing every day. It was good timing, since I promised Lindsay that I’d at least give the whole “dear diary” thing a try. I figure I can combine a training log with a diary, because they’re basically the same thing.

  Being a professional bike rider has been my dream for as long as I can remember, and right now, it seems like that dream is getting closer every day. Professional riders like my older brothers Leo and Steven have team managers, agents, coaches, and tons of help with their riding and everything around it, from massage for their legs to mechanical help for their bikes.

  Me? I’ve been riding and wearing their hand-me-downs since I was old enough to crawl, and I’m pretty good. But I’ve always felt like I was sort of this “extra” in their racing, not really as important as them. But now, thanks to Phoebe, our coach, and Lindsay and Jen—my two best friends and the other members of the Shred Girls team—I’m getting more pro by the day.

  And today is a big day: Jen and Lindsay are almost here, and my house is almost ready to deal with the influx of female cyclists. I can’t wait to get riding! But for now, it’s the three Rs: rest, recovery, and room cleaning. (My dad added that last one.)

  —Ali

  CHAPTER 1

  While I wait to hear the sound of a car pulling up in the driveway, I watch a video of last year’s downhill mountain biking competition that took place at the bike park near our house. Our mountain is known as much for its famous downhill bike trails as it is for its skiing, and though I haven’t actually ridden or raced downhill, because Dad said I had to wait until I was older to hit the slopes, I’ve watched the big race every single year. Racers start at the top of the mountain, and they blast down it going as fast as they can around corners, over obstacles, and under bridges. It’s fast, it’s scary, and it has always looked like so much fun. And this year, now that I’m thirteen, Dad said that I can finally start training and do the big race, as long as Phoebe thinks I’m ready for it. Which, I promise, she absolutely will.

  “Is this the final run?” Leo asks as he walks into the living room and sprawls out on the couch next to me. Since he finished high school and turned pro as a bike racer, he’s around the house a lot more. It’s…annoying. Because he spends a lot of his day training, he spends a lot of time doing that rest and recovery that Phoebe talked about in my training log, which might be great for a bike racer, but it’s bad for my sanity. He’s always around now, and he is definitely the most annoying of my three brothers. Steven is in school for engineering while he races professionally. He’s pretty busy, and I hardly see him at all. When I do, he’s mostly studying or busy with bike stuff. Charlie, my oldest brother, has been away at school in Australia for the last couple of years, only coming home and riding with us occasionally when he has breaks.

  “It’s the semifinals,” I inform Leo.

  “This is a good one,” he says. “See how that guy is shifting his weight kind of forward as he takes that corner? Way slower than if he leaned more toward the right instead of forward.”

  I nod, but even as I’m bobbing my head up and down, the guy on-screen is already through the corner and on the way to the finishing chute, where he’ll see his final time.

  “No chance of making the time cut with form like that,” Leo adds. He’s right. The guy is slower than his competitor by three full seconds, which is an eternity in downhill racing. Leo is hypercritical of racers, including himself and including me, so I’m pretty used to comments like that. And he’s usually right, which makes him even more frustrating to live with.

  “Are you excited to finally start training to hit these trails?” Leo asks, gesturing at the screen.

  “I can’t wait,” I say honestly.

  “Phoebe is a great coach at the BMX park, and she’s got some serious skills in downhill racing too,” Leo tells me. “If you listen to us, you girls are all going to do great.”

  I barely catch his use of “us,” like he’s going to help with our coaching. But I hear it.

  “What do you mean, ‘us’?” I ask, jumping off the couch to pace the room. I can see where this is going, and I don’t like it. “Phoebe’s bringing Ben, right? Isn’t he our other coach?” Ben is Phoebe’s boyfriend a
nd another great cycling coach, and I really liked him when I met him last month.

  “Ben couldn’t switch his work schedule around,” Leo replies, grinning a little evilly. “Phoebe asked if I could help out—show you girls some downhilling techniques and get you in at the sports science institute for some testing.”

  Great, I think. Just when I thought I was getting away from my brother, he finds a way to butt right back in.

  “Don’t worry. We’re going to have a lot of fun,” he promises, catching my expression of horror. I have trouble believing that, but at least I won’t be training with him alone—my new friends will be here soon. And as I look at the clock, I realize they should be here any minute. I run upstairs to get ready.

  Since I came home, I’ve been counting the days until Lindsay and Jen get here. They’ll be arriving with Phoebe pretty much any minute. (Phoebe is not only our coach. She’s also Lindsay’s cousin.) So I’ve taken to pacing in my room, both excited and terrified to have them here for the next couple of weeks.

  Looking around, I’m not sure how they’re going to like the house. Or my smelly brothers, come to think of it. The house isn’t too bad—there’s just a lot of wood. But that’s because I live in a log cabin, which means wood is sort of…Well, what else would you expect?

  But the house is awesome. My brothers took over the basement a long time ago, and it’s sort of a giant mess of a boys’ bedroom, combined with what’s essentially a bike shop, since they have what seems to be dozens of bikes. As for me, I got the loft, which I think is the best spot in the house, even if you can’t stand up in most of it. It’s the entire top of the house, and it slopes in on both sides with pine beams crisscrossing the ceiling. The only problem with it is that if you’re tall like me, you need to watch where you walk or risk smacking your head.

  It also has a couple of big skylights, which make it really bright and airy, unlike a lot of other lofts in houses nearby. Dad specifically built it like that. You get up to the loft by climbing a ladder—how cool is that?—and once you’re up, you’re in my territory. My desk for schoolwork is set up next to my big bookshelf, my bed is against one of the walls, and there’s a bright turquoise rug on the light, almost white, wood floors. It’s a big space, which is great, because now we have two other mattresses set up along the wall, where Lindsay and Jen will be sleeping. I’m a little nervous about sharing my space for two full weeks, but we all got along pretty well back at Joyride. Even our sleepovers went smoothly, so it should be okay.

  “How much do you want to bet that Ali ends up in pigtails and wearing lip gloss by the end of the week?” Leo says loudly from downstairs.

  “I don’t know. That might be an improvement,” Steven says, loud enough that I know he’s saying it so I can hear him.

  “At least she might finally start getting better at riding,” Leo says—again, loud enough that I know they’re having the conversation entirely with the goal of annoying me.

  It’s working, but I try to count to ten and not go downstairs and start yelling back. They’re just trying to irritate me, and it’s not going to work. I fluff the pillows on Jen’s bed, maybe fluffing a little harder than necessary. I gave her the pink sheets from when I was a lot younger and Dad thought that was what girls liked. Now I have a bright turquoise-and-black-plaid blanket with white sheets, and I like them a lot better. Lindsay’s bed is ready with comic-book-bright yellow sheets and a red blanket, so my room has lost a bit of my specific cool-color vibe, but I think that Lindsay and Jen will be happy. Dad even got us a TV to keep up here for the summer, which means he can get rid of us at night. (That’s what he said, but he laughed, so I don’t think he meant it in a bad way. Just that it’s hard for him to enjoy watching our shows on TV when he could watch the news instead.)

  While fluffing, I find the rubber spider that one of my brothers—Leo, I assume—stuck under Jen’s pillow. I’m glad it was me who found it, since I manage to suppress a scream. I know Jen would have freaked out, which is exactly what Leo was hoping for. Sometimes I really hate having brothers.

  Sharing a space with two other girls shouldn’t be too hard, I keep telling myself. At least it can’t be worse than living with my brothers. I’ve dealt with them my whole life, and I don’t think this will be much different. That’s what I’m hoping. But I know from the last few weeks that hanging out with girls is a lot different from dealing with my slightly pungent brothers. (I love that word, “pungent.” Lindsay used it the other week, and I asked her what it meant. Turns out it simply means “smelly” but sounds way fancier.)

  My room is about as ready as it can be, so I climb down the ladder and go check the kitchen to make sure the guys didn’t mess it up after I cleaned everything this morning. The fridge is perfectly organized, and I made sure the healthy stuff stood out, while the junk food stayed stashed in the back.

  I want to get off to a good start with Phoebe, and I know she thinks that healthy eating is really important for being a good bike racer. Which I really, really want to be. And not only because my brothers are, but because I love the feeling of wind in my hair, even when I’m wearing a helmet, and the exhilaration I feel when I land a jump.

  So I want Phoebe to get here and see that I’m really serious about it. I think it’s pretty obvious—especially since when you walk into our house, you walk through the garage, which is basically like another bike shop, filled with Dad’s and my bikes, a huge tool bench, and tons of spare parts. And the walls are covered in photos of me and my brothers riding, magazine articles about my brothers, medals, and even a trophy shelf.

  To say my family is serious about cycling is a bit of an understatement.

  That also explains why my dad wasn’t concerned when he decided to let Phoebe, Lindsay, and Jen stay with us. Dad didn’t so much as bat an eyelash when he heard everyone wanted to come. He said okay and started making room. Between my brothers, we’ve had a lot of cyclists stay with us over the years, and Dad says that there’s no way my friends will be anywhere near as annoying or eat nearly as much as Steven’s and Leo’s buddies. That’s probably true.

  Speaking of Dad, I can hear him stomping up the back steps and opening the door from the kitchen to the patio that overlooks the forest behind the house. And there’s forest in front of the house, to be honest. We’re in the middle of the woods; it’s unavoidable. “They’re coming up the driveway,” he says in his gravelly voice as he slides the door shut behind him. “You ready?”

  I take a deep breath. Suddenly I’m more nervous than I expected to be. Greetings are always weird when you haven’t seen the people for a while. It’s been only a couple of weeks since my last day at Joyride with the girls, and I know people don’t change that much in a short time, but there’s something awkward about saying hello to people you’ve become really close to so quickly.

  The sound of tires crunching up the gravel in our long driveway is getting louder, and I can see the roof of the car come into view. As they get closer, I can see that Phoebe is driving a big SUV, her big Oakley black matte sunglasses firmly in place, as usual. Her wavy black hair is pulled into a short ponytail, and her new bangs—those are straight—come right to the top of her sunglasses, like she brought the glasses with her when she got a haircut. (She probably did; she’s smart like that.)

  But while she might seem intimidating to some people, her big smile and the excited energy that rolls off her when she’s around bikes makes her a lot more approachable than I first thought she was.

  I met her a few weeks ago at Joyride when I showed up for BMX lessons, and at first I was terrified of her, but I tried to hide it. Luckily, she had her younger, much shyer cousin Lindsay with her, and that made Phoebe a lot less scary.

  Phoebe’s the first to bounce out when the car comes to a stop, but Lindsay and Jen both fall out milliseconds behind her, bickering about something that I can’t quite make out, but still smili
ng and rushing toward the porch. Suddenly I feel a little queasy with anticipation.

  It hasn’t been that long, but I’m feeling really shy. My dad—who somehow snuck up behind me (he’s big but quiet)—nudges me forward, and I stumble a bit as I head down the porch steps and into a group hug with the girls, who’ve simultaneously tackled me, while Phoebe bounces over to shake my dad’s hand. Jen and Lindsay are both talking at once, which is surprising, since a few weeks ago, getting Lindsay to say anything was a bit of a struggle. Now it seems like we’ll all be fighting for a chance to talk!

  Lindsay’s also really gotten into her new look since she and Phoebe bonded last month: now she even has the same funky straight short bangs as Phoebe’s, and her black thick-rimmed glasses make her look like a cool girl version of the lead singer of Weezer. (I know they’re kind of old, but my brothers love them.) She’s wearing leggings, as usual, but they’re dark purple, and she has a long black sleeveless top over them, and a big watch on her wrist. And, of course, she has her favorite gray canvas backpack and matching shoes.

  Jen looks like a fashion plate, despite the long flight and drive. She somehow managed to apply makeup that stayed on through the flight—a bit of glitter, of course—and she’s wearing a jean skirt with a purple off-the-shoulder top that I know her grandmother would be complaining about. (Sure enough, I can see a sweatshirt sticking out of her bag, so I bet she wore that when she left the house to go to the airport.)

  Compared to them, I don’t feel quite as fashionable. I’m wearing a baggy button-down plaid shirt that was my brother’s from a few years back, so it’s faded and cozy, and I have on cutoff shorts. At least Phoebe and I have similar shorts on, though mine are a lot baggier than hers. My slightly-too-bright red hair is a little frizzy from all the running around I’ve been doing, and even though I tried to pull it back, little pieces keep falling out. Cutting it short was a mistake for someone who wants to have it swept back in a ponytail most of the time. (Between us, I think magazines lie to girls when they say short hair is low-maintenance. It takes a lot of work to make it look like it does when it’s first chopped. I won’t make that mistake again.)